Daybreak
by lafiametta
Summary: She wanted to smile at it, the way he was looking at her, making her feel young and bright and alive, all the things she had set aside for so long, and suddenly there was the overwhelming desire to know how warm his sun-lit skin was, whether the dark plush of his beard would be soft or rough under her hands. (Mary/Jed, Post Season 1)


The sun had risen only a few minutes ago, with most of the hospital still abed, the barest creaks of sound emerging from the street and the kitchen down below.

And yet she was spent, nearly undone, worn clean through to the press of her shoulder blades and the aching soles of her feet.

It had been a few hours past midnight when she had finally been able to sleep, the dark hours filled with tending to the men in the ward who could not find rest, the ones who needed a cup of water held up to their lips, the ones whose troubled dreams could only be assuaged with the sound of her voice as she read lines of Keats and Shelley in the lamplight. She had fallen asleep in a chair, an open book resting in her lap.

But at half-past four, one of the patients had woken her and half the ward with sharp cries of agony. Amid the chaos, Doctor Foster had determined – for he was the only doctor that had seen fit to come downstairs at that time of night – that the boy needed to be quickly taken up to the surgery. His injury, a bayonet wound to the chest, had been treated the day before, upon his arrival at Mansion House, but from his ashen face and the distention of his abdomen, it was clear their initial remedies had done little to help.

He was New York 1st Infantry, she knew, sandy-haired, with warm hazel eyes and a smile fit to break your heart. Shame had curdled in her breast with the realization that she could not quite remember his name.

They had been unable to find any orderlies, so she had assisted in the surgery, holding aloft the lantern until her arms grew weary. With a never-ending pile of fresh cloths, she had soaked up blood – so much blood – and as quickly as they were needed, she had handed Doctor Foster the ligatures and the surgeon's knives.

As they worked, sweat had formed under her collar and across her brow – even at night, Alexandria summers offered little relief from the sweltering heat – and she brushed away what she could with an efficient swipe of her upper arm. She had glanced up, noticing that his face, too, was covered in a sheen of perspiration. It was a strange look that met her gaze – his dark eyes somehow intently focused on both her and the patient under his hands – and she did her best to take no notice of it, even as she leaned slightly forward over the table to softly wipe a cloth against his damp forehead.

But none of that mattered, not in the end, not once they realized that the private from New York still had the broken tip of the bayonet lodged in his body, most of the damage already done. They could trace the path of destruction: a bloody skirmish through tissue and arteries, through the pink striations of heart muscle. There was nothing they could do – although by God, they tried – and she watched as he grew paler and paler, his lifeblood soaking into the cloths that soon littered the floor around him, and then finally, as he ceased breathing altogether.

The private had looked younger then, almost like a child, as she gently shut his eyes and let him finally rest.

The room had grown quieter – were such a thing possible – as if the weight not just of this one soldier, but the weight of all the men, the weight of the war, the weight of all the world had fallen upon the two of them. Together, she and Doctor Foster had cleaned him up a little, to make him half-way presentable to whatever grieving family awaited him back north, and wrapped him up in canvas, in time for a pair of orderlies to collect his personal effects from the ward and take him down to the dead room.

Only once they were alone did the two of them wearily strip off their blood-stained sleeves and aprons and throw them into the baskets meant for the morning's laundry. In a few hours, one of the laundresses would come, and after that, there would be little indication anyone had been here at all.

Aside from what resided in their memory, there would be no way to know what had happened in the surgery during those last hours of the night, no way to know what was fought for and what was lost, no way to truly grasp the work of every hour and every day, every cut and every stitch, every life laid open like a heartbeat under her fingertips.

Weariness swept through her all at once as she closed the door to the surgery, the desire to forget everything and consign it all to the oblivion of her sleep. The staff would let them rest – for an hour or two – and for that she was grateful. She could not don a mask of cheerfulness in the wards just yet. She did not want to see the empty bed near the windows, a bed that no doubt would find another occupant by mid-day.

Perhaps it was only the deep strain of her exhaustion that could explain what transpired between the two of them that morning. Later, she would find it difficult to unravel the exact steps that lead them there – with Doctor Foster and herself, there had never really been a smooth and direct path – but loss of the private from New York undoubtedly played a part. But perhaps it didn't even matter. Perhaps this was always the end marked out for them.

She would also wonder if some part of her had foreseen this outcome, grasped it in some secret corner of her heart, known it even as he followed her up the stairs to the top floor. Because rather than continuing down the hallway towards his room – second door on the left, but she could find it in her sleep – he waited, quietly, cautiously, on the landing, watching her with his soft, tired eyes and looking for all the world like he wanted to reach out and touch her, but couldn't bring himself to actually do it.

That was their way: worlds contained in glances, in the brush of fingers in the surgery, in teasing and quarrels that masked sentiments too dangerous to be declared.

Her room was just off the landing – she liked it so, being in the thick of all the comings and goings – but now she felt immensely thankful that the hallways were empty, soft waking noises just barely emerging from behind closed doors.

His eyes were still full of her, intent and searching like they had been during the surgery, asking a question she didn't know how to answer, not in words.

She took the key from her pocket and walked quietly towards her door, opening it wide enough so she could enter. Propriety would dictate that she say goodnight – or good morning, in this case – and close the door behind her, and he would instinctively know that their time together had come to an end.

Propriety dictated these things for respectable widows, for men with wives, albeit absent ones residing in California.

But did propriety understand the measure of all she had sacrificed and how very little she was asking for in return? Did propriety understand what it was like to want to feel alive, what it was like to spend her days in this charnel house, pulled by the desire to feel – if only for a moment – the weight of her breath as it labored in her chest, the race of her heartbeat, fluttering skittishly like it had when she was a girl?

Without such sensations, how else could she be sure that she had not become one of them, one of the dead?

Her heart was lodged deep and tight within her chest as she walked through the doorway, knowing he was watching her leave the door untouched, still open to the hallway. He was a knowledgeable man of the world: there could be no mistaking what her act implied. She couldn't back look at him – she didn't dare – so she dropped her key on the nightstand and turned towards the window. The morning light was slowly warming up the eastern horizon, and she watched the daybreak as it skimmed across the sloped roofs of the buildings all the way to the waterfront.

At first, she heard nothing – a rough eternity could be found in the waiting – but at last there was the soft scuff of leather shoes against the wood floor, edging closer, and the low creak of hinges turning. As the door handle clicked into place, her body unexpectedly tightened, a long taut line pulling from her throat through her ribcage and down into the depths of her belly.

Merciful God, she remembered this feeling, although it had been a long time.

She couldn't help it: she glanced down at the nightstand, at the picture of Gustav framed in red and gold. There was the strong, biting impulse to close the frame and move it somewhere else, but she didn't want to attract attention to it. And it wasn't as if Doctor Foster was unaware that she was a widow, she reasoned; he had mocked her husband's title enough times.

He was so quiet behind her – if it wasn't for the shallow measure of his breathing, she might not have known he was there at all. For a moment, she wondered if he had fallen asleep on his feet, as a horse might, exhaustion somehow overcoming him even at this point. Fueled by equal parts curiosity and nerves, she finally turned around, taking in the long lines of him, the way the pale light caught along the side of his face and down the left half of his body. He was definitely not asleep.

His face was full of so many things, and she knew him well enough to recognize a few: trust, astonishment, unvarnished need. She wanted to smile at it, the way he was looking at her, making her feel young and bright and alive, all the things she had set aside for so long, and suddenly there was the overwhelming desire to know how warm his sun-lit skin was, whether the dark plush of his beard would be soft or rough under her hands.

He had kissed her once before – a moment they had never spoken of, but that she often recalled – clasped her to him with surprising strength, his eyes wild and dark from the drug. " _This is not you_ ," she had said as she pushed him away, perhaps to convince him, perhaps even to convince herself.

But as he stood in front of her, she knew – if only for this moment, as the daylight cast its spell over the two of them – that this was him. He was here, all of him, here with her.

He took a step closer, his outstretched hand tentatively circling around her waist. The weight of it was so perfect – just as a man's hand should be – as she felt it tether her to the ground below. Another hand reached out to cup the side of her face, the same way he had that afternoon in the ward, on the day of the President's visit. She hadn't known what to do then – even if his gesture had only been meant as consolation, the feelings he had aroused in her were too new, too unexamined – so she had pulled his hand into her own and sat with him, taking her leave only when the crowd outside began to filter back into the ward.

Yet she sensed that offering consolation was not what he had in mind this morning, not as he gently tilted her jaw upwards and brushed his lips against hers.

She closed her eyes, for all at once the room felt too bright, and gave herself over to the sensation of his mouth, the warm pressure of his hands. The delicate skin around her lips tingled as his beard rubbed against it and she half-wondered – shocking herself with her own wanton thoughts – what it might feel like pressed against other parts of her body.

Their kisses were chaste at first, slow and unhurried, with the same kind of deliberation and thought that they had brought to their work in the surgery. She brought her hands up to rest against his chest, feeling the subtle motions of his heart through layers of linen and brocade, and gradually they migrated upward, until at last she could brush her fingertips along the thick waves of his hair. There was no need to rush – for they had both already passed through the bloom of youth, that age when frenzy and passion overtake everything – and their bodies were weary regardless.

But still, even as he slowly urged her mouth open with his own, she felt the space growing warm, her clothes too tight and restrictive; before long, her arms delicately unlooped themselves from around his shoulders, hands moving towards the long line of buttons arrayed down the front of her blouse.

He understood – how could he not, for as doctor and nurse they had learned each other's signals perfectly – and with a flourish removed his cravat, his fingers nimble along the fastenings of his waistcoat. She swallowed hard, her stomach fluttering as she watched him slip off his suspenders and unbutton his collar, his linen shirt stained with dirt and sweat and blood easily passing up and over his head.

Aside from the men in the ward – and she could not count them, she knew, not coming to her in the condition they were – she had only seen one other unclothed man in her life, on her wedding night. She had little to compare Doctor Foster to, truthfully. But with a tiny, unbidden smile she realized that she liked the look of him, all lean muscle with a light dusting of dark hair across his chest.

But what was good for the goose was good for the gander, she supposed, her hands returning back to her blouse, until finally each button had been slipped from its enclosure. It was a trifling victory, however: all that was revealed was an inch-wide glimpse of skin, chemise, and corset. Her clothing was by nature more complicated than his, so many layers of lace and pale cotton, petticoats and pantalettes, and she dreaded the time it would take for her to remove it all. But to her surprise, he was more than willing to be of assistance, his hands deftly loosening the ties of her skirts, the hooks of her corset, until all she was left in was her chemise and her stockinged feet.

He came closer then, eyes catching the light, his unclothed chest pressed almost entirely against her, and with outstretched arms began to methodically remove the pins from her hair. It was hard not to think of his wife, the woman he must have done this for before – for where else would he have become so skilled? – but she tried her best to push the thought away, to remember that he was here with her, in Alexandria, and not in California. Taking a deep breath, she quickly lost herself in the scent of him, a heady mixture of sweat and candle smoke, iron gall ink and the familiar trace of chloroform. And at last, under his ministrations, her hair was finally freed, tumbling down in coils against her shoulders.

He kissed her again, harder this time, his hands curling into the lengths of her hair, palming the nape of her neck. She grasped him around the waist – and how wonderful it felt to do that! – and began to pull him back towards her, until at last she felt the mattress softly press against the backs of her thighs.

It took so very little to sit down, to lean back against the finely-woven hotel bed linen, and for a moment she couldn't decide which she enjoyed more: the bed, pressing pliantly against her aching back muscles, or the partial weight of him as he found his balance above her.

His hands skimmed along her arms, curving across the tops of her shoulders, tracing the line of her collarbone and the snaking pulse of her throat. They were skilled, his strong and steady surgeon's hands, and she couldn't help but laugh a little with the thought that perhaps she was now undergoing an examination of her own. She pressed up, finding his mouth again, smiling as they kissed, a breath only escaping from her lips as she felt him unfastening the buttons at the collar of her chemise. She trembled slightly then, as he pushed aside fabric and dipped his head, slowly kissing along her sternum and the downy skin of her breasts.

Her body flooded with warmth and need, but there was no place for it, no relief. She could only clutch feebly at his dark hair, her head spinning as if she were intoxicated, somehow wishing him to stop even as she was devising means to keep him chained to her bed so that he could never leave. Her legs opened wider, seemingly of their own volition, and he moved closer in response, his body shifting until he was delicately cradled between her thighs.

There was almost nothing separating them, she realized, nothing but his trousers and underclothes – and the thin cotton of her chemise. He must have noticed it as well, for one of his hands migrated down past her hip, smoothing against the outside of her thigh, his fingertips toying with the hemmed edge of her garment and tugging it ever so gently upwards.

She breathed out unsteadily, sighs half-caught in her throat, her body reduced to sensation as the swells of his palm traced along her thigh, her newly-exposed skin prickling in the morning air. It had been years since a man touched her in this way, and even so, she could not remember feeling quite like this. It was as if she were equal parts gunpowder and glass, combustible and fragile, capable – if so enflamed – of consuming not only herself, but him as well, and then the bed, and the room, and eventually the whole blazing world.

He stilled for a moment, and she could see that the hem of her chemise was now laying across the very top of her legs, just covering the apex of her thighs. His gaze lifted up, catching hers, a question written in his dark eyes and along the furrow of his brow. He wanted a reply, she realized; he needed to know that this was what she wanted.

In another time, another day, another hour, she might have hesitated. Something – a twinge of guilt or shame, a reminder of the rules and strictures that shaped her life – might have given her a moment's pause.

But this _was_ what she wanted, what she had wanted for some time now, even if she had been unwilling to admit it to herself. She had no need for hesitation.

Out of impulsiveness – and perhaps tenderness – her hand reached up towards his face, her fingertips brushing against the thick of his beard, glancing along to the strands of hair that lay just above his ear. She was taken aback by the expression on his face, so open and honest, without a trace of the sharp sardonic humor he so frequently displayed, and it was difficult not to feel her heart unfolding within itself, a bright blossom in her chest. She smiled at him, cheeks rounding slightly with warmth, and – knowing he was still waiting for her answer – gave him a soft nod of her head.

Was it solely her imagination or did he seem to be shaking a little as he reached down to unbutton his trousers, quickly shucking them off along with his underclothes?

He could not be cold, she reasoned, not in a room so warm, and not when she could feel the nearly-fevered heat of his body as he pressed himself back down against her. Compulsively, protectively, she rubbed her hands back and forth along his arms and shoulders, the friction catching along her skin with tiny, invisible sparks.

For a moment, he glanced up at her: the weight of everything was in that glance, for both of them knew there was no returning from this point. As she eased her legs wider, she felt his knuckles graze the inside of her thigh and then a sharp sting of tightness, pain the only recognizable sensation. She squeezed her eyes shut, her neck arching with the strain of it, waiting only for the discomfort to recede, as she knew it would, replaced after a few moments with a strange feeling of fullness, as if the world had somehow re-positioned itself to the space between her legs.

He began to move, slowly at first, his hands distractedly stroking along her neck and the side of her face, until her breath started to mirror the quickening pace of his motions. Her lips parted slightly, air finding its way back into her lungs.

Some part of her, she realized, wished desperately to stay there forever, breathing him in and knowing she was alive, feeling him encircling her, filling her, his body firm and strong and unmarred by the rough fortunes of war.

Flickers of fire began to catch in her belly and along the length of her spine, warm bliss pooling into her limbs. There was a blinding urge to contain it, to keep the sensation close, and she tightened her legs around him, one of her stockinged feet sliding against the back of his calf.

In response, he pushed more firmly into her, the press of his hips anchoring hers against the bed. A rush of unexpected pleasure rippled through her, concentrated just where his weight was the heaviest, and with a quick shift of her hips upwards she felt it again, even more powerfully. Her arms reached up to curl around his neck, her lips finding his even as she strained to find her breath, and she squeezed her legs more tightly, pulling him close, her heels pressing against the base of his spine. She needed him there, right there, and from the harsh and labored sounds of his breath, that was where he needed her, too.

Lightning danced along her skin, the pressure building in her hips, as they moved and rocked together. She stifled her cries, some part of her mind still conscious of the fact that she might be heard by anyone walking through the hallway. And then all she was capable of doing was pressing her forehead against his shoulder as the tension broke around her, warmth and light overcoming her in violent waves.

She had no words, no thoughts; she was nothing but a roiling sea beneath him.

She came back to herself just long enough to feel him pull away, as he rose up half-way onto his knees, his hands hurriedly grasping for his underclothes that lay crumpled against the foot of the bed. He glanced away and quickly spilled himself inside of them, before tossing it all onto the floor. And then, without a breath of hesitation, he lowered himself back down to her side, bringing the warmth of his body as he curled against her.

And all at once, she understood what he had just done, a sobering realization that brought to heel her still-racing heart. He would not leave her the way that Aurelia had been left; unlike the laundress, she would not need to suffer and bear alone any consequences of their actions. She was hard-pressed to understand the sentiments that began to course through her at that moment, overpowering what defenses still remained within her heart, but it was enough to wrap her tired arms around him and let her fingers trace along the raised indentations of his ribs.

She let him sleep like that, cheek pressed against the pale curve of her breast, his dark hair in tousled disarray.

The world was awake now, morning light streaming insistently through the window, blanketing the two of them entirely. Even so, she could feel her eyelids falling shut as the sun warmed her face, a sweet, soft oblivion calling for her to surrender. Glancing down at him once last time, she began to think in German – as she often did at the point of near-sleep, or in her dreams – and drowsily whispered words of endearment she knew he would never hear. "Jed, _mein Täubchen_ … _mein Liebling_..."


End file.
